It’s hard to imagine how unhygienic candle-blowing or your family’s jarring birthday overtures could possibly make eating cake more pleasurable. But, researchers at harvard and the University of Minnesota say it’s exactly the singsong and ceremony of such rituals that can drastically change our perception of what we’re eating — for the better.

In a collection of studies published in the journal Psychological Science, Kathleen Vohs, a psychological scientist at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues conducted a series of experiments to see how nonfunctional mealtime rituals affect our perception and consumption of certain foods.